The Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) is call­ing on Gov­ern­ment to give af­fect­ed To­ba­go fish­er­folk a com­pen­sa­tion grant.

Al­most two weeks af­ter a cap­sized car­go ves­sel caused an oil leak 150 me­tres off the coast of the Cove in To­ba­go, the Op­po­si­tion said fish­er­folk will now strug­gle to earn a liv­ing.

Dur­ing an Op­po­si­tion news con­fer­ence yes­ter­day, Cou­va North MP Ravi Rati­ram said fish­er­folk in ar­eas such as Lam­beau have not been able to ply their trade since the in­ci­dent took place on Feb­ru­ary 10.

He al­so ac­cused the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture, Land and Fish­eries of not deal­ing with the con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed seafood in To­ba­go.

Rati­ram said, “The fish­er­folk have been ground­ed. Ves­sels from Scar­bor­ough to Black Rock have been ground­ed … At this point in time, fish­er­folk can’t ply their trade plus there’s go­ing to be a loss of earn­ings for fish­er­folk across To­ba­go.

“Fish­er­folk can­not ply their trade, can­not go out and earn a liv­ing, earn an in­come to put food on the ta­ble for their fam­i­lies. What is this Gov­ern­ment do­ing at this point in time to show com­pas­sion for these fam­i­lies? There is ab­solute­ly no com­mu­ni­ca­tion com­ing from the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture, Land and Fish­eries,” he added.

Fish­er­folk are al­so pre­dict­ing a short­age in fish due to the oil leak and as a re­sult, said the price of fish will climb. And for those who are still able to catch fish, Rati­ram said they too may be faced with ob­sta­cles as many peo­ple may be­come scep­ti­cal about pur­chas­ing fish at the mar­ket in fear of be­com­ing ill.

The Op­po­si­tion said Gov­ern­ment should con­sid­er how deeply im­pact­ed fish­er­folk in To­ba­go will be.

Time to de­clare

Tier 3 emer­gency

Mean­while, the Op­po­si­tion is al­so call­ing on the Dr Kei­th Row­ley-led Gov­ern­ment to de­clare the oil spill in To­ba­go a Tier 3 emer­gency.

While ad­dress­ing the is­sue in par­lia­ment on Fri­day, Prime Min­is­ter Row­ley said seek­ing in­ter­na­tion­al as­sis­tance may be the next step, but did not spec­i­fy how soon.

How­ev­er, the Op­po­si­tion yes­ter­day de­mand­ed Row­ley act on the mat­ter now as it is a dis­as­ter af­fect­ing not just T&T but the re­gion.

While the ves­sel is still stuck on the reef at Cove, To­ba­go, its spill has reached as far as Grena­da.

Rati­ram said, “We are call­ing on the Gov­ern­ment to ac­ti­vate the Tier 3 re­sponse and in­vite the nec­es­sary in­ter­na­tion­al agen­cies to have this spill con­tained and to bring to an end the con­tin­u­ing de­struc­tion of To­ba­go’s eco­log­i­cal en­vi­ron­ment and now that of the neigh­bour­ing coun­tries who may al­so be at threat.

“It is clear that this Gov­ern­ment has failed to act in a time­ly and re­spon­si­ble man­ner. As such, the Op­po­si­tion is now de­mand­ing the Gov­ern­ment to act now be­fore things get worse. They have failed to recog­nise that this is clear­ly a Tier 3 dis­as­ter. And they have failed to in­vite the in­ter­na­tion­al agen­cies to pro­vide the nec­es­sary as­sis­tance and to treat this mat­ter as a mat­ter of ur­gency,” he added.

Ac­cord­ing to the Na­tion­al Oil Spill Con­tin­gency Plan, Tier 2 spills are medi­um-sized spills that can sig­nif­i­cant­ly im­pact the vicin­i­ty and an area or na­tion­al sup­port for ad­e­quate spill re­sponse is re­quired.

Tier 3 spills are large spills re­quir­ing sub­stan­tial re­sources and sup­port from re­gion­al or in­ter­na­tion­al spill co­op­er­a­tives to mit­i­gate ef­fects per­ceived to be wide-reach­ing.

Along with fish­er­folk, the Op­po­si­tion said many res­i­dents and vol­un­teers are al­so be­ing af­fect­ed.

Rati­ram said vil­lagers of Lam­beau and en­vi­rons are now forced to re­lo­cate or suf­fer the stench due to the spill.

The lives of the clean-up vol­un­teers are al­so at stake, ac­cord­ing to Rati­ram as they too are be­ing ex­posed to harm­ful gas­es.